If the government is now describing the 400 million quid owed to Tehran as a legitimate debt why could they not have done so five years ago and spared #NazaninZaghariRatcliffe all that time in jail?
Matt Frei
16.2K posts
Matt Frei
@mattfrei
Now Channel 4 Presenter and Europe Editor. Author of Italy the Unfinished Revolution and Only in America. Still husband of 1 and father of 4.
Washington, DC
Joined November 2009
- Overheard in Berlin bakery: “Brexit is like a 97 year old royal behind the wheel. You know it’s a bad idea but are too polite to stop it.”
- Dominic Cummings on eye sight is Prince Andrew on not sweating...
- Message to Putin and co: you can no longer rule like Stalin and live like Abramovich.
- Joke making rounds: “Apparently @KwasiKwarteng had trouble getting a seat on the plane because no one wanted him near business OR economy.”
- Some Tories are talking about @BorisJohnson as if he was an aberration foisted upon them. They made him. They own him.
- Italy records 368 new deaths in one day. Worse than the deadliest day in Wuhan.
- Lot of resentment in the gated community (Downing Street) that mostly junior and female staff have been handed fines from the Met. Not the bosses who called the shots to break the rules they had made. Will #SueGrayReport correct that?
- The best scenario Russia can hope for is to the victors a landscape of rubble, a disobedient enraged Ukranian population, economic meltdown at home, pariah status abroad. A very hollow Greater Russia, relying -if lucky- on China. And then what?
- The best thing the Met could/should have done tonight for some obvious reasons was to stay on the sidelines. Their heavy hand is astonishing
- Just crossing the border from Ukraine to Poland. Hard to leave. Border v quiet compared to last week. But Russia bombing airfields not far from here. Queasy feeling this is just the end of the beginning.
- May is blaming the EU for tying HER hands in a backstop that she orig, requested to satisfy HER red lines. No wonder EU pulling hair out
- Brexit was all about taking back control. Never has EU had more control than now. Revoking 50 gets it back without scorching economy
- “I know the right hon gentleman rarely leaves north London.” @RishiSunak trying get @Keir_Starmer on metropolitan elitism, tricky one coming from an ex Goldman Sachs PM worth 730m